Ask LH: Why Isn't Game Of Thrones Season 4 On iTunes Yet?

Hey Lifehacker, When is season 4 of Game Of Thrones coming to iTunes? Thanks, Westeros Waiting

Dear WW,

Now that season 4 has finished, there are quite a few ways to watch those Game Of Thrones episodes — check our roundup for all your options. However, the ability to download episodes on iTunes is conspicuous by its absence. That has been irritating for some viewers, especially those who last year became accustomed to downloading episodes from iTunes immediately after broadcast.

That was actually an unusual option that only existed in Australia for that season — elsewhere in the world, Game of Thrones has only been available on iTunes around the same time as its DVD release. It looks like that's going to be the case everywhere this time around, which means our best guess is that it will appear sometime around January 2015.

Apple hasn't been returning most calls from media asking about if the series will be available earlier. Adam Turner at Fairfax was told by Apple to ask the series local distributor Warner Brothers, who in turn sent him straight back to Apple. He speculates that Apple has been offered the show but doesn't want to pay a premium for early access, which sounds entirely plausible to us.

Whatever the reason, the end result is that Game Of Thrones S4 seems unlikely to be on iTunes for quite a while. This is the reality of TV in the age of digital distribution — no single legal service is ever going to have every show you want.

Cheers
Lifehacker

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I actually don't think they're so stupid they don't get it. They get it. It's just that without their current distribution model, the distributors have no job. The internet is the death of their job, so they're doing whatever they can to hinder their eventual demise.

As the article said - Games of Thrones isn't on iTunes anywhere in the world. In Australia it's on Quickflix now - and in the US it's on Amazon Prime now. GoT is not on Netflix - Amazon has exclusive rights.

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